According to leading analyst firm Omdia, B2B currently represents 40% of CSPs’ total revenues, but 80% of their growth potential. CSPs are taking note, and many are investing in building up enterprise divisions and developing partnerships so they can offer ICT solutions to B2B customers. There’s a big prize to be won here as GSMA has reported that the enterprise technology solutions market could be worth $400BN to CSPs. In addition, McKinsey recently published survey results that show that 80% of businesses want to buy more than just connectivity from their CSPs.
Delivering technology solutions is dependent on high-speed, secure connectivity. For many applications used in an office fibre provides the required connectivity, but what about outdoors, or locations (such as sports stadia) where demand is sporadic and there isn’t enough existing fibre connectivity? Large outdoor events like music festivals or sporting events rely on mobile to provide the connectivity to support many technology applications. Also, many mission-critical applications related to security, emergency services and smart cities rely on mobile connectivity to make sure that the applications and technology solutions work as expected. These solutions could range from providing EPOS (electronic point of sales) to merchants at a music festival to providing remote support via video for emergency services.
At TM Forum’s Ignite event in Copenhagen and their Innovate Asia event in Bangkok, Qvantel and Nokia created solutions that enable CSPs to sell, test and assure guaranteed connectivity to support B2B offers. Using the AI-driven BSS from Qvantel and the autonomous network with a digital twin from Nokia we showed real-use cases where CSPs could sell guaranteed connectivity to support different applications, such as live event broadcasts to large screens and EPOS terminal support for merchants at an outdoor sports event. Both these applications need to work on the day of the event. Best effort connectivity isn’t good enough, as the customers need to be sure that the applications will work.
As part of the solution for the catalyst, we created offers and business intent in Qvantel Flex BSS and used AI to help guide the salesperson through the sales process. As part of this process, the offers were validated (e.g. live broadcast to large screens at a sports event) using intent probing, which leveraged knowledge graphs, AIOps and the digital twin in the Nokia autonomous network to ensure that the connectivity will work as expected. The salesperson could then sell a service level agreement to their B2B customer, giving peace of mind that the solution will work. As part of this solution, AI-driven dynamic pricing of services could also be applied in order to optimise network load and help ensure SLAs are maintained.
The next part of the catalyst was to assure the service on the autonomous network after it went live. We showed how to measure the solution performance on the network, and if there was any danger of the SLA being breached, e.g. due to an increased number of users, then we were able to proactively identify the anomaly using AIOps , derive the root cause and recommendations using AgenticOps, test it on the digital twin and resolve the issue with closed-loop automation.
At each catalyst, we progressed the use of the latest technology. For example, in the catalyst for Innovate Asia, we introduced an MCP (model context protocol) server for powering additional ways to drive sales efficiency and accommodate the use of leading AI apps as clients into the solution. We also extended the capabilities of the intent management with extended reporting capabilities. For example, for the Innovate Asia catalyst, we were able to show the ‘best’ service level capabilities. For example, we asked the digital twin if the autonomous network could support broadcasts from 50 high-definition video cameras in a certain location on a given date. Previously, we would get a yes / no answer if the service would work. Now we would get a response that the network could support the 50 video broadcast cameras as requested, but it could go up to support 75 video broadcasts if required. This provides further upsell options for the salesperson. In addition, we also used CoPilots to dynamically evaluate the information in the knowledge graphs for advanced decision making to provide answers for a wide range of questions, such as ‘when would be the best possible time to plan a maintenance window?
Being able to develop, validate and sell solutions that are built on the foundation of guaranteed connectivity will open many new sales opportunities for CSPs and help drive new B2B sales revenues and growth. Running the networks that deliver technology solutions to B2B customers gives CSPs an advantage over their competitors in the B2B tech solutions and services space. Being able to guarantee the connectivity of these networks to support the delivery and operation of tech solutions further strengthens that advantage and makes CSPs an attractive technology partner to many B2B customers.
Qvantel and Nokia have been extremely fortunate in both the TM Forum Ignite and Innovate Asia catalysts to have worked with very innovative partners including e&, Telsta, Telin, Mobily, Ooredoo, VNPT, Mobily, STC, Deutsche Telekom, du, Red Hat, Microsoft and Infosys who provided real world use cases for the solution.
In order to get a deeper understanding of what this solution can deliver for CSPs, please download the joint Qvantel Nokia White Paper: Accelerating Intent to Impact – Using AI-Driven BSS and Autonomous Networks to Drive New B2B Revenues.
Topias Koskimäki, Head of Product Management, Qvantel
Deepa Ramachandran, Head of Autonomous Networks Strategy, Digital Operations, Nokia